EMILE FABRY | ALLEGORY OF VICTORY

Private Collection, Belgium 

Jacqueline Guisset, Emile Fabry: 1865-1966, Antwerp, 2005, p. 50, no. 55, illustrated 

Emile Fabry trained at the Academy of Fine Arts Brussels and went on to study under the Orientalist painter Jean-François Portaels at the Royal Academy. By the 1890s, Fabry’s work illustrated his interest in Symbolism, and he exhibited at the Salon de la Rose + Croix in 1893 and 1895 alongside fellow Belgian painters Jean Delville and Fernand Khnopff.

During World War I, Fabry fled Belgium for England to avoid the fighting in Northern Europe. The Allegory of Victory was likely completed in 1919 and honors the soldiers killed at the Battle of Verdun, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war. Victory stretches her arms towards a military helmet full of flowers. Out of the helmet rise various flags of Europe, as well as a spirit that passes from a fallen body toward heaven.